Birthright Maps - Hi Res and carefully scanned

[Vicente]

Thanks a lot for this, really appreciated

[Arjan]

i think there is no upload size limit for the download section here on BRnet.. so you can always put them up here

[TheChamberlain]

Of course you should make them available to other fans; what's the point otherwise?

Hmmm no word of thanks, nice....

Thank you ShirraWhitefur on behalf of the FAN's

Using them for my current Campaign.

[Rykros1]

I think the fact that 50 users have downloaded these is indicative of gratitude.

However, I do personally want to thank you for these. My computer is a beast and opens up the high-res versions in the blink of an eye and seeing these gorgeous scans and the even compilation of the separate maps makes me enjoy the game I run so much more.

Nice job man. Can't wait to see a full map of Cerilia, if you intend to do one.

[Rey]

And of course, I would like as well to express my gratitude for this fine work. May there be more people like you. Cheers!

[Kami]

Thank you muchly, kind sir!

[ShirraWhitefur]

Well, I'm happy to see people actually are enjoying the work! That's what makes effort worthwhile.

As to getting more done, it's debatable as to when it will happen. Had to do an OS reinstall this past weekend, and I'm still lacking a lot of time to throw at this project in any case. We'll see what the future brings.

- Shirra

[ShirraWhitefur]

Initial tests with a few autostitching programs have been promising for the map work. The results are nice overall, though I need to work on adding a backdrop for empty spaces, and then there's the need to manually add places back in, since despite the blending, only one image will have priority.. so if we're dealing with map edges, one of 'em will have no domain names and such and it will often enough blank out the ones that should be there. Which means carefully hand-copying in stuff and trying -not- to mess up the color of the map.

Then there's the parts that may be even worse to try and fix.. where the blending gives an overlap of map feature names.. Seeing areas in the upper left of the Cities of Sun map half-named, quarter named from the great bay, and similar from the Vosgaard map in the upper right.. So the end result could be a bit messy.

As it stands, I'm seriously debating rescanning the maps, all of them, -again-, just to see if the current program can yield a better result then the hours of by-hand work, considering it was designed for photos and not maps, and using that for base, as I know my own results are imperfect. Noo, no OCD here! ^_^ I'll probably pass on that though, for now.

I'm seriously thinking that, if possible, I'm going to strip out all the map lexicons (as it stands, there's three in the image!), and only add in the map-scale marker when all done, manually. Again, this is all in the 'ambitious project idea' stage, so it's entirely possible it'll just get dumped. However.. does anyone have some GIMP/Photoshop tips on how to get a patch of the map background, and replicate it to most sizes and 'meld' it into the map so it fits, so I can fix patches I had to do heavy fixing?

Further thought.. and this one's important to the final product.. In cities of the sun, there's this one bloody island far to the south, Khoufayla. It causes the whole map to extend downwards, -past- what Anuire and the Low Detail map show for Aduria's shape. I can either have a big unfinished area in the left for Aduria, or I can get rid of that single island, making a smooth cut off at the bottom of the map. I need people's opinion on that.

- Shirra

[AndrewTall]

I'd drop Khoufayla, or add it in in a separate box higher up than its true position - quite a lot of RL maps deal with outliers like that.

Good luck, I spent an age with a photocopier trying to size the maps to the same scale, with scissors and tape to then rebuild the maps into an overlay - doomed to failure from the outset but I felt that I had to try.

What is annoying is that WoTC presumably have the electronic file somewhere and could easily have put it in the 10th anniversary pack...

It is a pity that Kay isn't on the boards more as this is her thing - she re-drew the map in prettier colours

I could email the two complete maps that I have if you think that they would be helpful, although neither is layered.

[ShirraWhitefur]

Well, that looks like it for the project, unfortunately.
I sat down and rescanned a few maps, and tried to feed them into image autostitching software, and unfortunately the results were less than viable. The problem being that the scanner I have available is, best said, junk, and skews every image slightly, giving each and every one a slightly different warped perspective. While I think I did an admirable job fixing it by hand for my maps, they were far from perfect, which meant making stitch-able overall map was just not panning out... And also means that since I can't make anything better with my current scanner, the overall map project, for me at least, is done.

This would be different if I was able to hit a copyshop with an A1 sized scanner, but I'm fairly sure I don't have the permissions required to do that.

Anywho, I'll mention if situation changes, but I think that's probably 'it' for now.

- Shirra